In Tunisia, the citrus sector is a strategic component of the overall national economic development programme. The Cap Bon region (Nabeul Governorate) is the main citrus growing area, which provides around 80% of the national production. The region is characterized by a typical Mediterranean climate with hot summers and precipitation occurring in the winter, which does not exceed 500 mm of rainfall per year.
Socio-economic issues
Citrus-growing is a key economic activity in the Cap Bon region, which supports a large network of farmers, permanent workers and families. Farms are predominantly small-scale, with over 90% of citrus orchards in Nabeul's main production areas covering less than 5 hectares. This limits investment capacity and constrains modernisation.
The profitability of citrus farms is increasingly affected by groundwater overexploitation (extraction rates reaching 195% in Nabeul), rising salinity levels in irrigation water, and citrus orchards' high-water requirements relative to local rainfall. Farmers are also exposed to energy costs linked to pumping, since electricity generation relies almost entirely on imported natural gas, alongside climate variability and declining export volumes. Limited and increasingly saline groundwater often remains the main available irrigation source, raising both production costs and farmers' economic vulnerability.
The Action Panel also highlighted the need to modernise citrus orchards, strengthen farmer organisations and collective structures (cooperatives, GDAs), improve access to finance and precision-irrigation technologies, including solar-powered pumping, and reinforce collaboration between farmers, researchers, institutions and water managers. Clearer water governance, stronger technical support and better-coordinated deployment of energy and irrigation solutions were proposed as essential to support the sector's long-term resilience.
